My documentary project revolves around media criticism and serves as a platform for greater discussion of the treatment of transgender individuals in the media (non-fiction, news media, that is). To facilitate conversation and illustrate the problems in the media regarding bodily privacy and respecting an indvidual's identity. While I am in the process of reaching out to the various media outlets for permission to utilize footage for my project, I'm not receiving any feedback. While I need to keep trying, I started thinking about my other avenues. Insert fair use. I watched this fantastic video on youtube that features prominent entertainment lawyer Michael C. Donaldson. For each media example I utilize, I must ask myself three questions:
1. Does this item well illustrate your point?
2. Did you only use as much needed to illustrate the point?
3. Is the connection between the item you are using and the point you are making obvious to the average viewer?
I thus far have asked myself those questions and it has aided me well in cutting down on the length of the clips I've utilized in conjunction with my interviews. As Donaldson mentions: I need to treat this project like a journalist. Through my research and interviews, I have revealed a lot of inequalities and inappropriate treatment of trans individuals within the media system, and that's what my focus is on. While I want to do this process right, this project has ultimately been a creative and intellectual exercise for myself and a launching pad for what I plan to take with me into graduate studies rather than something I aim to distribute.
Today
was the last day of my Fall 2013 semester classes. It flew by in the blink of
an eye but I sure did learn a lot especially in this class, Fiction Field 1. Despite the fact
that this class caused the most stress and probably took a year off of my life (slightly
exaggerating) I learned so much.
After
this semester I have a much greater appreciation for films.I now realize just how difficult it is to
make an amazing film. I loved this class because we were given one main project
and were assigned one main role. I was able to focus on one job as well as
offer assistance to my teammates when they needed something.
Working
in a team is definitely not my favorite thing to do but with this project I had
to let go and have confidence in my teammates. I learned a lot from it and am
now more comfortable relying on other people to do their own jobs.
This
project really showed me how much effort is put into every aspect of a film. It
also made me realize what I wouldn't want to do and what I would like to pursue in
the future.
Thank
you so much Arturo for all of the guidance and help along this learning
experience.
As the semester comes to a close, I have a lot to think about and a lot to reflect upon; mainly, the new-found appreciation I have for the field of film production. Before this class, I can confidently say that I already knew much more about the industry than the vast majority of my friends. I've always had an appreciation for the film industry and for those who work in it, but not to this level.
Last year, I took an intro to field production course, and I certainly learned a lot from it, but my overall opinion of film production was not at all affected through the experience. Fiction Field Production 1--through the semester-long project we had to complete--taught me a whole lot more about the industry than I ever would have thought possible.
What was so different about this class was the fact that, for the first time since I've gotten to this school, we were assigned a legitimate project that really put everyone's skills to the test. The project was simple (or so I thought): make a film that's based off a news story. The story can cover any topic and can be from any time period. Everyone in the class brought in a story, we voted on the two we liked best, and then we split ourselves into two groups.
With two groups of seven students, everyone was able to have their own crew position, instead of having everyone split the work evenly like in the intro class. The most exciting part was that we, for the most part, chose the group and position we would stick with for the entirety of the semester. As one who has never been particularly fond of preproduction work, I was ecstatic to be able to step aside and let someone else take care of it.
Now, while this was an especially exciting part of the project for me, it was also one of the more nerve-wracking aspects of the process. While it was no longer my responsibility to write, schedule, direct, or shoot the film (I was given the position of editor), it also meant that a whole lot of things were out of my control. Sure, I could give my input on whatever I wanted--and it was often well-regarded--but for the most part, the final decision on most things was not mine.
My point is that while it's nice to not have to bother myself with certain aspects of the project, it also meant that I had to have faith in my fellow group members. As one who tends to take control in a group setting, this was something I had to quickly learn to get over. From the very start, I had to constantly remind myself not to intervene in others' work and to trust them more than I usually would have in the past.
With everyone working on their own portion of the film, a whole lot more effort could be put into each aspect of the project, as opposed to when everyone had to split their efforts amongst everything. With every student putting forth a whole new level of effort into their work than I've ever seen before, I was able to really watch and admire everyone's talent while also taking the time to appreciate the amount of work they were each completing.
Yes, my job as editor had a lot of work that came with it as well, but to truly be able to see the amount of work that goes into the entire process of a film's production and the high level of skill that's required to make a quality product is unbelievable. I used to think we simply weren't using the proper equipment to make a good film, but it turns out that what it really takes is a group of talented students who are willing to put forth the effort. Duh.
Thank you, Arturo Sinclair, for a brand-new experience and for passing your knowledge onto all of us.
Here's the Facebook event for the screening this upcoming Saturday!
As of now, I have been awake for almost twenty-four straight hours, about ten of which have been spent editing my group's short film, "Cracked". After having been up editing until about 3 or 4AM for the past four days, I've decided tonight was the night when sleep was simply not an option. Tonight's cutoff time was about 5AM. This wasn't due to being kicked out of the library or to my roommate yelling at me to turn off the light. It was due to the fact that most of us working on the film's picture-locked draft tonight reached the point where no good could come out of continuing our work. The last 4 days have been some of the most taxing and fulfilling days of my life, and since I'm running on little to no sleep due to the deadline I've been given to have this film finished by, I figured now is the best time to give you my honest opinion of editing with a deadline.
It's difficult.
Editing is difficult. There's no question about it. It takes a lot of time, patience, and skill. Sometimes, none of these are available. Having approximately four days to edit a seemingly twenty-minute, picture-locked copy so that our sound designer can have ample time to make our project sound as professional as possible, time is simply not of the essence. It's unfortunate, but it's the hand I've been dealt, nonetheless.
Patience is not one of my virtues. That's a fact. If something isn't working the way I want it to, I've been known to begin cursing out my laptop at a reasonable volume right in the middle of the library. The problem with this is the fact that, in order to edit something just right, an editor needs patience so that he doesn't accidentally scare everyone sitting within a fifty-foot radius of him. Very few things ever fit together perfectly with ease in the editing process. It's important to remember that.
Clearly, one needs to have some level of skill in order to be good at his job. Now, I'm not saying that I'm a bad editor. I like to think that I have some level of talent. The fact is, though, I'm still learning new things everyday. Just tonight, actually, I must have learned at least three new editing techniques from my fellow group members that I had no idea were available to me. These three or so new techniques I learned are certainly going to come in handy sometime soon down the road, but I really wish I knew them a few months ago. It just goes to show that an editor is never done learning.
It's stressful.
Four days. Really? Four days to edit an entire twenty-minute short film. That's all I was given. The deadline I was given was set for a very good reason. We need to have the film's audio mastered by someone who truly knows what they're doing, but seriously? In order for a person to provide you with his best work, you better give him the necessary time to do so. The more rushed an editor is, and the less sleep he has, the more difficulty he's going to have in turning in a quality project.
The most stressful part about the whole thing is that, despite the little time film editors are often given, the entire project still comes down to you. It's basically like the last five seconds of a basketball game. Your team as retrieved the ball. They've gotten it down the court. They've set you up with a perfect shot. It's now up to you. You can either score the game-winning point, or you can miss the shot and your team's effort was all for nothing. An editor can either be the hero or the complete screw-up on a film crew.
It's bullshit.
No matter how well the preproduction and production of a film go, the editors always seem to get screwed over. You'd think the editor would be given as much time as they needed to make the final product their best possible work, but no. Editors always seem to have the shortest deadline out of anyone on the entire production crew.
Sure, being the editor has its perks. The most evident one is the fact that I had to do little to no work up to this point in the project process. What could I do? There was nothing for me to edit. Another major advantage would have been--if we hadn't needed someone to work audio for our first two shoots--that I wouldn't have been required to go to the actual shoots. That could have easily been more time to relax or to edit what we had already shot (which I was luckily given for our group's final shoot on Sunday).
Despite how fair it really is that I have to run off little to no sleep for a mere four days, instead of having work the entire semester, I still attempt to put the idea in my head that the whole thing is bullshit. Don't ask me why. I'm just tired.
It's totally worth it.
At the end of the day, and at the end of the whole process, editing is truly one of the most rewarding positions in the entire crew, especially with such a short deadline. To be able to look back and say, "Wow. I did all that in four days?", is all the reward I need. To have the privilege to be able to see the entire progress from a script, to a shoot, to a cluster of files, to a beautiful film is an absolutely indescribable feeling. The editor is the final puzzle piece to a film, and it's an honor to be that final piece.
Good news, Kaboom is almost done with production. I would estimate that with another hour or so of some last minute editing that we will be done with our project. One thing that will take some time will be adding the vocal track to a phone conversation scene in our piece. I am very excited to show you all on Monday.
Hannah, Courtney, and I finished all of our shooting on Wednesday. Due to the wind and the time of day, it was a difficult shoot, but we were able to get all the shots we needed. Even though it was sunny on Wednesday, the angle we were shooting from caused us to need to wait for cloud coverage. As a result, some color correction will be needed for a few scenes, but they are very brief shots, so it should not be too difficult. We are going to work on that portion together and use the processes we learned in class in order to make sure we do it correctly.
I have most of the project edited together as a rough cut and the only scenes missing are the two new scenes we shot on Wednesday. So I will be making our final edits to the rough cut and then editing it down even more today and tomorrow. Once I finish the editing process, Hannah, Courtney, and I are planning on getting together to work on final corrections, transitions, and color correction. I want to make sure we are all happy with the outcome since we have dedicated so much hard work and effort to the project, so that's why we will definitely have a group meeting before the project is due. We will also be working on all the necessary paper work and plan to be done by tomorrow night so that if anything goes wrong, we have Sunday to fix it. Overall we are on track to finish by tomorrow night, and as a group are very happy with our overall content and product.
The Purple Cobras shot 90% of their footage last week and everything came out amazingly. Our editor Mike has been working diligently on the film as we are all excited to watch it come together. We will finish shooting the footage probably next thursday and move into the final steps of post production.
For my final project I was thinking about doing something military related. Not using actual people in the military but instead the story of the friends of those who are in the military. This story comes from my own personally life in that one of my best friends is in the army and could be shipped to duty within the next 2 years. I have had many talks with him and his family and all of our friends, it is not always easy to know someone who will be going on active duty soon. I need to develop the idea more but this is the basis for what I might do.
Our group has made a lot of advancements in our project since last week. We completely changed our project idea, as well as wrote the script, casted our show, picked a location, and established shooting times. We are very excited to begin shooting on Monday with our cast.
One of the obstacles our group ran into was casting our child. We had to change the sex of the child from a boy to a girl (Timmy is now Ellie). It's also difficult to meet the needs of a young child, since they are not as flexible with shooting times. But, we have Melissa Gattine's child casted and ready to go.
We also need to pick up a few props for our project, such as the can of coins, the new stuffed animal, hot sauce, etc. These things we will probably pick up at a local convienient store or somewhere like Wal-Mart or Wegmans.
Finally finishing the script is a very tedious job. I was really nervous to send it to my team members even though I had spent a good amount of time working on it. I had to make it seem realistic and actually flow like a story, all while maintaining the integrity of the actual news story the script is based off of. One thing that I think students and new script writers often have a difficult time writing, is using real voices that make their characters sound like humans. For example people in real life don't talk with perfect English or have the correct grammar all of the time. It was my job as a script writer to capture the elements of how I think these characters and how these people talked. Watching a video of the two main characters was a good indicator of how they can actually talk. I am proud of my script and my team members were very helpful with helping me edit, and obviously creating the story since we all did that together. I hope the product is solid.
Well, there's not much to say about our project, as Haley covered it in her post. Right now we're finalizing our cast and our script so we're ready to shoot when we get back from break. We're also working on contacting someone about the old-fashioned car.
When we get back, we will work with our actors to figure out what scenes we will shoot and when. Our script is still in the works, as Haley mentioned, but it is coming together smoothly.
I am excited to see everyone's projects when we get back, and I hope everyone has had a great spring break!
This week my group and I have been contacting each other via Facebook and email. Matt finished the script which looks really solid. I contacted Nicky Wood who we hope will play Art in our script. I have not heard back from him yet but I await his answer. We have not decided where we want to shoot yet but figured that we need two days to shoot the film at two separate locations. Our main actor is going to be played by one of our friends who is absolutely perfect for the roll and is very excited. We are contacting our other actors this week to find out their availability for possible shoot dates. Hopefully the weather will be a little warmer by the time we are ready to shoot next week.
Craig, Mike and myself are working together as the team "The Purple Cobras" for this assignment to develop a short film around a story about a teen who was struck with kindness of strangers when a man offered him a well paying job. This man had heard about the teen's struggles to support his brothers and sisters after their mother passed away and how the teen had trouble getting a job. This sounds like a good ol' heart warming story that can be turned into a film? But can it really? Does it have a 3 act arch and does it have character development? We had to find some ways to creatively tell our story and still make it appealing as a film.
We have decided that the story it's self will remain the same, but will be the middle chuck of our film. We still need a solid beginning and end. Without these our project might as well be useless. Without the beginning we wouldn't be able to get into the characters situation and learn about his life and the hardships he goes through. We need a reason to root for this character and learn a little back story about him and his family before we can develop the plot. On the opposite spectrum we also need to wrap up the ending with closure. We can't just leave the audience wondering what happened because we ended our film in the middle of the story. We have to show the effect and reactions to what happens in the plot and how everything turns out.
I love writing but this should be an exciting challenge for me as I write the script. My writing excels in scriptwriting for television. I love how the characters have room to grow and develop over a broader sense of time and how intimate you can make certain situations that would be cut from a film. I'm very lucky to have such hard working and brilliant team members to help me develop the story and change/add things to the script. I look forward to writing it this weekend. But it will not come as easy to me as if I were writing an episode of TV. We have to tell an entire story in a very short amount of time and still develop strong connections to the characters and produce a heartwarming story. It will be a good challenge for me and I hope I can do this story justice.
Our group began filming our short film today and I have to say, I think we're off to a fantastic start. Footage looks great, everyone did they're jobs incredibly well, and we all made it through, relatively on schedule.
We all woke up at around 7 AM this morning and headed over to Ithaca's First Presbyterian church. The location was perfect. We needed no lighting equipment at all during the shooting of these scenes. Everything is naturally lit and looks wonderful.
We went to my friend's house to shoot a particularly impressive scene in terms of lighting. Since we didn't have a cop car at our disposal, we set up two lights with a red and blue gel on each one, then our grips each waved flags in front of them. It led to what looks like a very realistic cop car lighting effect, and I can't wait to show it off in the final product.
The actors we have did great; we have a particularly awesome Irish cop and our lead did excellent.
Overall we worked very well as both a team and a creative unit and I think we're all going to be proud of the final product we create. Hopefully we can maybe get into some festivals, but as for right now, we'll just focus on making it as good as possible.
And maybe we'll catch up on some sleep along the way.
Yes I know that the project has come and gone but I figured, better late than never. Now before I start this, I would like to say that I did understand the point of the project. That in the real film world, if there had to be a re-shoot then it would be very important to try to mimic the same motions again as closely as possible and that just in general, if somebody can direct a person's subtle movements than they probably know what they are doing directing wise. However, if I'm going to be completely honest, I was not a fan of this project.
The main thing that I had a problem with was that there wasn't any fiction involved, there was no creativity. Yes I suppose that recreating something could be considered creative but I felt like just spying on a group of people and then recreating their motions wasn't creative to me. It didn't satisfy my creative itch. I think it would have been fun if we had a choice of a movie scene and we would do our best to recreate that. Because then we would have the choice of our scene and we would be able to put our own creative twist on it while still recreating it. I think that that would have been a directorial exercise that would have been both fun and informative.
Another thing that I wasn't a huge fan of was the actual video. I'll explain what I mean by that. In the beginning of the semester you said that you wanted us to make videos that we would want to put in our reel, videos that we were proud to show off and brag about. Now I only speak for myself when I say this, and not for anybody else in my group, but in all honestly I'm not that proud of the video. It's not something that I would ever show somebody mainly because I don't think it's very interesting or entertaining in any way. It doesn't tell a story and if I was to just show it to somebody, I honestly feel as though they wouldn't care at all about it. The one shot project on the other hand I am very proud of and I have showed it to my friends and family and I think that it came out very well. I liked the story I told and I'm very happy with how it turned out. This cinema verite project however, I can't say that I feel the same way.
Like I said at the beginning of the post, I do understand the point of the project and I do understand where this exercise came from and in all honesty I think it's a good idea to do. However, I really wasn't a fan of making this a full blown project. We spent over a month on this and I personally think that this is something that we should have done over the weekend as a quick exercise and then just left it at that. Making this a full project was something that I didn't really like. I really didn't feel like I put any effort into this and that's probably because I didn't. Personally I just wanted to get it out of the way so I could move on to whatever was next. If I was going to spend over a month on something, I would have liked it to be for something that I would end up feeling proud about, and as I have already mentioned, I really wasn't proud of this project.
Which takes me to our next project. This is the one that I'm looking forward to the most and probably for a fairly obvious reason, I have a lot of creative freedom for this one. Yes it needs to be based off of a news story but I mean, the news is more than interesting enough for a fictional story to come out of it. This is the kind of project that I would like people to see. After watching this final project, then people could form an opinion of my directing and storytelling abilities.
The morning after, or rather the day after, I directed my first project for this class might have been as much or more stressful than the day of shooting itself. I think we certainly have proved Murphy's Law: "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." After all of the mishaps of the night before, I was actually very pleased with how the footage turned out. The next day, however, I had a problem: I could not get the audio files from the Tascam. Yesterday it took me from 12-5pm to extract the audio data. I think I am the first and only Parkie to have had this problem. Because of how the data is organized in the Tascam, it turns out if even one file goes astray and is not in a new project, but is just a new file, Macs cannot find it. So when I took out the fire wire adapter, I discovered that my project was Project1s, but I could not access the files. It said that there was no data. I freaked out and went to PPECS and luckily Phil was there to help me out.
He told me that the only way to get my files was to find a Windows or PC computer with a fire wire port. This was no easy task. After going through Park and multiple computer labs, I went to the IT desk in Friends, but they told me there were no computers with a fire wire port on campus that I could use. Having to sit through an Intro to Theatre lecture after that was really tough. Then I remembered my friend Sean, one of my actors from the night before, has a laptop with both Mac and PC software. I met up with him and we were able to extract the files. Another problem, since my hard drive is mac oriented, I was unable to copy the files to my hard drive while he was using the PC software. He had to upload the files to Google and share them with me so I could get the files. What a day. All of this happened before I had to turn my equipment in at 5:30 before the files were lost forever. It was pretty nerve racking, but I'm glad at least that at the end of the day, I got my audio files.
After 5pm, however, my day wasn't over. I also had to return all my equipment to PPECS and then return borrowed props back to their owners. Having a cold on top of everything did not help either. I was exhausted because even after this whole debacle, I could not rest. I had to teach a Zumba class from 6-6:45, go to an ICTV post-production meeting from 7-8, and then from 8 on I had test shooting as a 1st AC for a thesis. By the end of the night, I was drained.
Luckily, today is a new day, I'm well rested, and I'm ready for more.
I got this idea for the project earlier today in the shower. Yeah. In the shower. Shut up, the shower is a magical place. What, you've never been in there and thought, "I'm gonna write a novel about some termite overlords" and then gone and written a novel about termite overlords? What the bloody hell are you doing in there?
Anyway, it's going to be a trailer for Ithaca's first-ever horror/thriller TRIPLE FEATURE. I'm using clips from three old B-movies: Invasion of the Bee Girls, Driller Killer, and A Certain Sacrifice. I'm doing this because -- let's face it -- nobody hates a poorly ADRed B-movie trailer. I think I can get away with this if anything.
I'm still not totally convinced that this project is what I think it is, but whatever. All I know is that the grade doesn't matter as long as it looks good... and as long as the grade's good.
PS: The clips that I'm using have people in no clothes sometimes. No clothes! Oh goodness, oh gracious! Whatever shall we do? Call the authorities! The ambulance! The rescue squad! Ha ha, don't really do that, because it's ART.
I mean Picasso would be like, "Whoa bro, that's art" and I'd say, "Bro" and he'd say "Bro." Then we'd have a bropocalypse of art. Bro.
Seriously. I have no idea what I'm doing with this. It's just awkward for me to take two movies or something and try to put them together, then ADR over it and make something "new." Even if I were to ADR it and change the lines to make it fit, it would still look awful.
I would rather make something original that I know will look good and sound good rather than hack together something from a bunch of different clips from a limited selection. I'd ADR a Disney movie, but oops! Those aren't free domain.
Anyhow, I've got Plan 9 on the docket right now. I'll see what I can do with that..
I'm just going to write a quick project update. I put together a site map for my Facebook application that is in the spoke wheel layout.
I was looking at Yelp to get some ideas of things I maybe missing as well as seeing how they lay things out. Yelp is a Web site where consumers can generate content from restaurants to religious organizations. The content is usually reviews, but images can be posted as well.
From looking at Yelp's Web site, I realized I need to add a few categories to my application. For example, under arts and entertainment they have the following categories: Arcades, Art Galleries, Botanical Gardens, Casinos, Cinema, Jazz & Blues, Museums, Music Venues, Performing Arts, Professional Sports Teams, Psychics & Astrologers, Social Clubs, Stadiums & Arenas, and Wineries. I'm not sure I need to add such an extensive list, but I definitely am going to need to expand some of the areas of the Facebook application and the site map accordingly.
I just wanted to remind everyone that if you have not yet joined and commented on the Facebook Travel Application event please do so as soon as possible. Also, I wanted to say thank you to Arturo, Francesca, and Garrett for commenting. If you have not commented it is not to late. Your comments do not have to necessarily be travel application specific. For example, you can comment on some features to make the application more user friendly. It should take you less then 5 minutes to comment.
Some of you may not have Facebook. If you do not have Facebook, please comment on this post of what you would like to see in an travel application.
Last week I wrote a long post about the reading, this week I decided to focus my post on our project. For my project I was originally planning on doing an interactive tourism environment that was almost game like. Then a few days ago, I read an article (the link is below) about Apple’s plan for their new tablet. It made me consider a few good points about creating the project. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Use resources that are available to you. You should be filling a void in the market. I discovered through research there were environments that did exactly what I intended to do already available. Additionally, I discovered that Facebook doesn’t have any really good travel applications. The best one available is Going Places, which only has a few hundred users (less then 200 active users). Thus, creating an interactive travel application for Facebook would fill the void in the marketplace. Products can have multiple uses. These uses can be from educational to fun. I realized that what I create should be interactive and fun while still having some educational value. Having a product with multiple uses will expand the market of people who would be interested in the product.
